


Doomed

by Plajus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Android Lil Hal, Blood, Kidnapping, M/M, Multiple Deaths - God Tier Revival, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, Referenced Gore, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-19
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:12:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3369101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plajus/pseuds/Plajus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After god tiering, Dirk is captured by the Condescension. Being a newly immortal god, she gets creative with her methods of death for him, and every time Dirk dies he sees the man who died for him 400 years ago who tries to help Dirk decide between giving up or fighting back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Your memory of your god tiering is extremely fuzzy and that infuriates you, because you hate not understanding something. You hate when people are vague for dramatic effect, because all facts should be laid out on the table during the beginning of everything. It’s why you hate a lot of movies. If the characters just _talked_ there’d be a huge decrease in unnecessary misunderstandings.

But you don’t remember much. You died in a blinding light and you do at least remember a single moment of burning pain and then you were dead. You don’t think you spent much time being fully dead, because you didn’t see a dream bubble or some white afterlife or God. You just stopped existing for a moment and then you were awake.

When you woke up, everything was restored. You weren’t hungry, you weren’t thirsty and your body didn’t ache. You were dizzy, but that recovery was the first thing you remember.

You tried to understand where you were. There was no purple bed under you, just space filled with billions and billions of starts. Your dizziness was fading and you started to see shapes. The shades on your face lit up with a very sudden red text.

TT: DIRK!

You blinked away colors in your vision and reached up.

What you were going to do was press on the arm of the shades, push the ends more securely against the skin over your ears where the neuro connect was so you could quickly think out your response. You planned on something like “Why are you text screaming?” or “Calm your shit” at your fake intelligence, but you didn’t get to do any of that.

Rough and leathery fingers grabbed your jaw and wretched your head sideways. The sound of the crunch was so much more present than the pain as you spinal cord gave up and you died in an instant.

 

 

 

 

You hate this “waking up and gotta figure out what the fuck is going on” thing that’s going on with you. This was your first time experiencing death while god tier and it was honestly extremely terrifying, even when you knew you were going to come back to life. While you were dead you had more fuzzy memories (ugh) of a street sign.

It was green, sitting on a gray pole, the bottom dusty with weeds. You only saw one of those two street signs, one facing you and another sideways so that you couldn’t see the name on it. The street said Jamison Ave.

You don’t know what it meant. You weren’t confused. You just saw the sign and went with it for those few moments before everything was a fuzzy mess and you were pulled back into reality.

Now you have to deal with where you are. Your neck doesn’t hurt and your spinal cord is back where it belongs without any broken vertebrae. There’s a gray floor under you, hardly a foot away from you face, and you realize you’re kneeling. There’s a vent in the left corner of the room. There’s a steel table in the middle, straps on one wall, and suddenly you’re thinking about your apartment over the ocean.

One time you pulled out one of the random books that Dave had left stacked up in his old room. It was about the Dark Ages and you became so unbelievably bored in that apartment sometimes that you flipped through it and found the chapter about Medieval torture. The Brazen Bull, the pear, the Judas Cradle.

That’s what this room reminds you of. Perhaps more futuristic, fitting for someone powerful. There’s a glowing pulse in the walls, as if the entire building is alive with a beating heart and the veins are pumping blood. The walls are a dull red and your pulse picks up faster than the veins in the wall as you start seeing that symbol everywhere. The table, the small computer set up, on the wall, on the chests of drones that you’ve only just now noticed.

This wasn’t a building, this was _her_ ship.

You reached for your shades. Your hands caught behind you back, cuffed. Your shades weren’t even on, but it had been habit. You looked at your purple god tier outfit, your white tights dirty and stained on the knees, and it was almost embarrassing to be crouched here in poofy asshole pants while these two drones stared down at you with unfeeling gazes.

You didn’t pant or gasp, and you weren’t scared, but you were unsettled. You had spent your entire life fighting these drones of hers so that she wouldn’t kill you. You’ve sent her viruses and you’ve even killed two trolls that she sent to your apartment once. You’ve made her survival of power hell, and now she has you.

You hate being without your shades. Hal is your contact to the internet, to your messaging systems, to every code you’ve ever made. You’re so vulnerable. You don’t even know how to use your powers or fly. Besides having died and come back to life, you feel like a stupid human still.

The drones don’t move. They’re just looking at you. The ship pulses in a slow and steady beat. You know they’ll most likely grab you if you up and run but they’re so still that you begin to ponder if they’re turned off and put there to intimidate you. Maybe you’re being tested. So you slowly slide your leg against the floor that’s damp. The whole room seems to be damp, just the way the Condescension likes it. Instead of kneeling on both legs you’ve got your left foot pressed firmly into the ground, testing the drone.

You glance towards their eyes, towards your foot. Then your chest seizes, only for a moment. You see the black that had blended in with the dark coloring of the floor, the black strands that are knotted and thick and attached to something else, someone else.

You are suddenly so, so hyperaware of the breathing behind you. She can’t see you, so your eyes are wide. She’s been there this entire time, just standing there and staring at your back while you try to figure out where you are. You can hear each breath. She knows that you know she’s there now.

“You were going to run.”

When she speaks, it’s not what you imagined. You’ve spent years thinking of her evil voice, but that carefree taunt was not what you ever expected to hear, and you don’t know how to process it. You hate not knowing what to do. You hate not having a plan, you hate not understanding, and you hate not having Hal.

You keep staring at your toes where you see her hair right next to them. You don’t have your shoes. Your toes are cold and damp from the floor, but you keep them where they are because sliding back into your kneeling position feels like surrender, and you want her to know that even if she has you here, even if she broke you neck, she won’t get what she truly wants. Fuck, you don’t even know what she really wants here.

“Why wouldn’t I?” you say. You speak towards the drones now. You don’t owe her proper conversational manners. “Would you stay if you were me?”

“Nah. Nice pants.”

“Thanks. They were on sale for only one death on a bed.”

She chuckles, which is the last thing you were expecting to hear from her, and it isn’t some evil laugh from those shitty movies, it’s real, as if she actually finds you humorous. She doesn’t speak after that though, and you don’t move from your position. One of the drones starts humming, some fan turning on in its chest.

“Are you staring at my ass or something? How long are we going to hang out here?” you ask.

Again, you hate not understanding things. You want to know why she wants you here and alive, and you want to know what she plans to do with you. It doesn’t even have to benefit your escape, you just want to _know_.

“It took five minutes for your body to heal and for you to come back to life,” the Batterwitch says.

“Great,” you reply, because you honestly don’t understand the relevance.

There’s a loud noise of metal banging down on the equally metal floor, and you don’t need to look to know it’s her big ass trident. You consider being a smartass again and bringing up King Triton, but you continue to keep your mouth shut for now, because hopefully if you wait long enough she’ll give you the answers you yearn for. The sooner you understand what she wants the sooner you’ll be able to really focus your thoughts and make a plan.

“I think it depends on the injury,” she finally speaks next.

“Are we still on the context of passing time?”

“Yes.”

You already understand what she’s getting on, and your lack of response tells her just how you feel about that. You don’t shake or cry or beg, you just say, “I don’t see the point of this. You’re only risking me being rescued or escaping.”

“Can’t kill ya and I keep ya dead either,” she counters. “You’ve caused me a hellofa lotta problems, Dirk.”

“Are you going to kick me around or not? Gouge my eyeball out? Boil me alive? Have me choke on hot oil? ‘Cause really, you’re wasting valuable time chatting me up like this.”

“I expected you to be a shit talker. Can’t wait until you’re beggin’.”

You scoff, because you refuse to drop your act. You’re nervous though. You’ll most likely beg if she really does gouge your eye out, and it’s further proof for how you feeling like throwing up because you thought about it for too long. You suddenly make a mental apology for every lobster that’s ever been boiled for a meal, because you definitely don’t want that either. You might even break your own neck to end it all.

The Condesce finally moves. You hear the click of what must be her heels, the thunk of her trident, and then the dragging of her long mass of hair. You’re not afraid to look up as she passed you and you don’t cringe as her knotted hair brushes along the side of your body.

She looks down at you and grins, her mouth reminding you of a shark’s mouth, but somehow she has really beautiful eyes. It makes her all the creepier. She lifts her trident so one of the spokes presses under your chin and you give in for now, tipping your head back to stare at her.

“The oil thing wasn’t on the list, but thank you for the suggestion,” she purrs.

You hate how you don’t think she’s lying.

“We’ll start small,” she says and the cold metal of the trident drops away. One of the drones moves and opens the door for her with a low squealing noise until it’s fully open wide enough to fit her, her horns, and her hair. The drone follows her out and then slides the door closed sideways once more until it cuts away the rest of the ship and you’re left alone with a second drone. You look up at it with less fear. You’ve destroyed tons of these things.

You had a sword and Sawtooth those times though.

This one is red and more humanoid looking, but it doesn’t look like he’s too complex with his thought process. Probably basic stuff like when you activated Hal for the first time.

It suddenly moves and you respond on instinct, wanting to defend yourself, so your slam your shoulder into the robot’s middle after launching yourself up. Its metal hands grab your waist and pick you up with such ease, tossing you through the air. It takes you a moment to figure you where you’re going, and you only realize it when you hit the wall with a grunt and then slam into the floor since you can’t use your hands to support you.

Your chin is scraped and your ribs are sore, but you’re mostly glad that the Condesce didn’t see any of that. You don’t want to break in front of her.

You don’t get recovery time. The drone grabs you by the front of your shirt, jerks you to sit upright, and shoves you back against the wall. You grind your teeth together from the strength in this thing, thinking that you could build a better body than this thing. Hell, you have. You’ve made the greatest body in the world and it’s sitting alone in your apartment, useless. You never got to activate it. The _game_ got in the way.

The drone connects your cuffs to another chain so you can’t leave your new spot by the wall. Then it backs off and just stands there, glaring down at you. You’re still pissed, so you kick it in the leg, but it only hurts your ankle and the drone continues to stand there and stare.

“Can you talk?” you ask it. “What’s the plan here? Babysitting?”

It doesn’t speak or move. You move back, sliding yourself over your cuffed wrists so that they’re in front of you instead, easing the aching and stiffness in your shoulder. You think your chin is bleeding so you reach up to touch the tender spot and find red on your fingers. You press your sleeve to the spot to soak the blood and hate that you tell yourself that this pain is nothing compared to what she has in store for you.

You wait for her to come back for her torture, but nothing happens. The drone doesn’t move and the door doesn’t open. The ship pulses. You count passing minutes.

You think about Roxy. She must be worried. You think about Jane and Jake, all probably worried. You think about how you left things with Jake, such a shitty break up, everything about you two was so immature, and right now all you want to do is say sorry and have the most grown up chat that could ever exist. You don’t want to get back together, you just want to be his friend.

Hell, you died next to Roxy. She might have even seen the Fish Bitch kill you and kidnap you.

You kind of hope they rescue you, but you always want them far away and safe. You’re independence will be the end of you, but you’ve gotten better at asking for help ever since you decapitated yourself and trusted Jake to smooch your head. No matter what happened between you and him, between you and the girls, you fucking love them so much.

It’s not like you’re dying right now. You don’t know why you’re thinking such things, it’s far too depressing. You need to stay on top of things and prepare yourself for what’s coming.

 

 

 

 

The Condesce doesn’t come back for hours. It feels like it’s been an entire afternoon. The drone hasn’t moved, even after you kick it and mock it. You’re chilly, so you exercise by facing the wall where you have most of the chain length and twist your upper body back and forth, stretching muscles in your stomach and sending blood to your core.

You lay back against the wall after. You kick the drone repeatedly. It doesn’t move.

“I’m getting bored,” you call out, knowing she must be listening. It took you a while, but you’ve recently noticed a camera in the upper right hand corner of the room.

No one comes to ease your boredom.

Everything makes sense another hour later. You rest your head back and try to ease your nerves so you can nap. The second you doze, the drone’s metal hand slaps across your face until your jaw is throbbing and your skin is stinging.

“What the fuck,” you spit out, holding your cheek. You glare up at the thing, wishing you could rip its head off like you’ve done with other drones. Early you told the thing you’ve kill its brothers and sisters and others. It just stood there. You wish you could intimidate the unfeeling shell.

You test the thing, risking your own face’s pain again by lying your head back and closing your eyes. You make your body slump as if you’re sleeping. The thing slaps you again, even harder, and you hold a cry in your throat.

She’s not going to let you sleep.

You’re fine, it’s fine, you never slept well back in the apartment either, you ran on small amounts of sleep and were just fine. Hey, it was better than choking on hot oil, you could do this.

You hold your cheek that’s going to bruise and tell yourself it’s fine.

 

 

 

“I’m thirsty,” you call out, looking towards the camera. You wave at it as if you’re that one kid in the child’s choir who notices their parents in the crowd as you try to get the Batterwitch’s attention, or whoevers watching.

No one comes and brings you water. No one comes and brings you food. The door stays shut and the drone towers over you, making sure you don’t rest your eyes for even a second.

 

 

 

 

You’re staring at the drone’s knees. Too much time has been passing. You’re tired and you’re hungry and thirsty. You stare at those knees and see a scuff of dirt on the red metal. You blink, slowly, not enough to keep your eyes closed.

You have no source of sun, no sense of time. You don’t know how long you’ve been sitting here. Six hours?

Twenty-four?

You try to judge time by how you’re feeling. Dying makes you feel recovered, so you started out perfectly fine when you woke up in this room. It takes about six hours for you to get hungry again between meals. Then again, you’ve been hungry a long time. Your stomach isn’t growing anymore, it’s aching and it’s making you feel sick. Meanwhile, your mouth is so dry. It’s damp naturally, but it’s like you’ve been sucking on too many cotton balls. You try to make it better and tell yourself it isn’t severe yet. So maybe twelve hours. You’re not exhausted yet. You’ve stayed awake over a day or two before.

You’re worried about the water.

You turn your head and finally stop looking at the drone’s knee. You look at the floor that’s damp, all the time. You don’t do it yet. You want to lay down, press your tongue to the floor and soak up whatever’s sitting in the cracks, but you can’t let her see you like that.

You look instead at the table in the room, the kind of steel table that you used to see in murder mystery shows when the corpse laid out and opened up to find evidence.

You wonder if she’ll do that to you on that table. Open you up and make you look at your heart while you’re still alive.

Honestly, you’d rather starve like she plans on doing now.

 

 

 

 

You sing later to pass the time. Softly, under your breath. You don’t want her to hear. It’s a song that Jane showed you once with a YouTube link and you both spent time messaging about how great the music video was and then spent another hour close reading every meaning of it. You miss her.

You wonder if the drone likes your singing. You ask it, but it still just stands there. You name it Jen, but you decide it’s a he. You give him a back story. He’s the runt of his drone family, and he’s not good at anything so his only job is to stand there and do nothing since he’s one of those fuck ups that destroys everything he touches.

You feel sick. It’s a constant sensation of being nauseous, but you can’t puke.

 

 

 

 

You smack your lips. You’re so thirsty. It’s been so, so long and you hate it so, so much. You make this noise as if you’re going to cry, but you don’t, you can’t lose that moisture. You run your tongue around inside your mouth, trying to moisten everything up, but you feel like you’re drying out like a worm in the sun.

You’ve never actually seen a worm, but Jane said they always came up after a rainstorm because the ground would be too flooded. Then the sun killed them.

You feel like a worm in the sun, you suppose. You feel dry and wrinkled. You look at the wet floor and consider it. What’s the point if she’s going to kill you when this is all over and then do it all over again? If you resist dragging this out then the ending death will come quicker.

Then again, if you drag it out then you’ll spend less time with the extremely bad torture and be closer to rescue. Maybe.

They probably have no idea where you are.

 

 

 

Another hour later, you give in.

You slump on your side and press your tongue to the floor. It’s gritty and smells horrible, but  you taste moisture. The relief is short lived until you taste only salt and you cringe and pull back, sitting up again and feeling even shittier.

You should have known it was salt water. It makes your thirst worse and you hate yourself for being so stupid.

You consider throwing your head back against the wall and killing yourself with a single crack. But you also want to drag this out to avoid all her other methods of torture.

How long as it been? The salt is like poison right now, and you scrape your tongue against your teeth and you blame the sick taste for the stinging in your eyes.

“If you let me drink then you can do this fun sleep deprivation thing longer,” you call out towards the camera.

 

 

 

 

No one brings you any water. It has to have been over a day. Your muscles feel kind of achy. Mostly in your arms. You’re so, so thirsty, and you keep wanting to lick the floor even when you know it’ll make the situation worse. You’re thirsty and you’re so hungry that you started retching not too long ago but nothing came out except for something that you can only assume is stomach acid.

You’re getting pretty tired now. You’re not exhausted like she wants you to be, but you’re definitely yawning a lot and feeling the start of your energized part of tiredness. Usually after staying up an entire day you get this random bout of energy and you usually spend it getting tons of work and exercise done before you collapse and sleep a good twelve hours.

“I’m thirsty,” you say aloud. It’s not begging, but you’re getting there. You hate that. You don’t want to break.

You’re getting cold.

 

 

 

 

No one comes and you’re starting to become scared that no one else exists. Maybe they all left. The ship docked and everyone got off and you’re stuck here with this drone forever.

You tried using your powers. You stuck your hands out towards the done, good ol’ Jen, and tired to do the heart thing. Whatever the heart thing is. Maybe give him a heart? Then he’ll feel sorry for you and help you escape. When it doesn’t work you attempt flying, but you can’t seem to do that either. Maybe you need to be in the moment or something, like if you leap out of the ship and free fall before spreading your arms and taking to the wind.

Unless you’re in space. Then you’d be taking to empty space.

You suddenly yell for water. You tell the Condesce to come face you herself. You’ll fight her here and now with your hands still cuffed. You’ll fucking kill her.

 

 

 

 

You’re slapped awake. You blinked hard and gasp from the pain. You’re tired. You’re so thirsty. Your hands are constantly shaking and you’re losing track of all time and that makes you so frustrated and irritated because you still hate not knowing what’s going on. You’re pretty sure your heart is beating faster than normal. You’re hyperaware of everything. Something is dripping nearby. Jen’s chest humming from an internal fan.

You actually grow excited whenever you hear footsteps pass outside, because you know you’re not truly alone. You’re still existing. You’re seeing things sometimes. You see Jake in his gas mask and you think you hear his muffled voice.

You’re slapped again. Your cheek hurts a lot, the same bruise being abused again and again. You want to sleep and you want to drink so, so badly.

“Please,” you yell out, holding your cheek. “Come on, please.”

 

 

 

 

He keeps waking you up. You’re past energy time. You’re stay still to conserve energy.

All you think about is water. Food. You think about the food Jake used to send to you back in the apartment. You loved waking up and finding an old box sitting in your home filled with fruit and carefully packed meal.

Hal would looked up recipes for a good meal and he’d talk to you through the shades while you followed his instructions and cooked something. You loved your discussions with Hal. Like you, Hal based everything off of logic and facts, but while he grew self-aware he also had these occasional moments of deep, romantic ideas about life and death. The less robotic he became and more human the more you enjoyed talking to him when you were lonely and the mental effects of your life took its toll.

Being alone all your life, sometimes you thought your friends were real. Sometimes you had nightmares that you made them up and they were a hallucination. But Hal was something you created with your own two hands. You can trust what you make.

 

 

 

 

You’re retching again, coughing and gagging. You’re so hungry. The thirst and starvation makes you want to pass out, but fucking Jen keeps slapping you awake. You’ve revoked his name because you hate him and now he’s named Testeclit and he’s not a he anymore, he’s an unfeeling it again.

Your throwing up noise sounds like a sob, but you don’t want it to be.

Then again, you’re breaking down. You’re hungry. You’re thirsty. You’re so tired.

The drone hits you again. You didn’t even realize you were falling asleep.

 

 

 

 

You finally break.

You yell and beg. You’ll do whatever she wants if she gives you a fucking meal, some water, fucking please already. You yank on the chains that hold you to the wall until your wrists are as bruised as your face.

She doesn’t come and you cry. You hate yourself for it. You shove your hands against your face to get rid of the tears because you’re trying to hold your water in, but it’s not working, it just keeps coming and you hate yourself.

 

 

 

 

You jump with a yelp. The door clanks open and your heart leaps. You’re shaking and you can’t control it.

It’s her, she comes in, and you’re so desperate.

“Just kill me,” you say right away. She hasn’t even come in fully yet and you’re already wanting to hear the crunch of your neck again. You’re just so happy you’re not stuck in here alone anymore, you’re so desperate for something to happen. You’re so fucking sick of this room.

She drags her trident. The stupid drone that’s been watching you all this time steps back. The Batterwitch stands over you, towering your form that’s slumped and dying against the wall and you’ll admit you’re intimidated, just not aloud.

She moves very suddenly and you flinch. Her trident is slammed into the wall, a sharp spoke on either side of you neck. One side is stinging and it might be bleeding. She’s got you pinned, but you’re already chained here, so you know she’s only doing it to make you feel small and powerless.

“Begging?” she asks.

You’re so glad you’re hearing a voice that isn’t your own.

“How long have I been here?” you ask back.

“How long do you think you’ve been here?”

You reach up, wrapping your cold fingers around the spoke of the trident’s end as you think. You’re so tired. You can’t think like you usually can. Usually you can think up codes and equations at a moment’s notice, you could list the entire periodic table of elements. You can’t think of anything. You lie as if you really thought about it.

“Four days.”

“Five,” she says with a smile. “Most humans die without water after three days. You are very impressive.”

Five whole days. Jake, Roxy and Jane have been wondering where you are for five days now.

“I grew up in a learning environment,” you say as if you’re not afraid that you’ll be stuck here forever.

She holds her hand out behind her and snaps her fingers, making such a loud noise with it. There are two drones with her. One of them holds out a glass bottle and you know there’s water in it, it’s glowing and beautiful and you eye it like it’s the only thing that matters in the world, making everything around you disappear.

“Come on,” you urge her, rather than give in and break.

Her thumb covers the top as she holds it over your head and tips it upside down. A few droplets slip past her finger and hit you on the forehead, so your arch your head back and one touches your lip so you lick it up and it’s so, so fucking good.

“Did you have fun?” she asks. “Will you be good?”

“Come on,” you urge again. You need more than that drop. You need it all.

“Wasn’t too torturous, was it?” she continues. She moves her thumb, a single splash coming down before covering it again. It hits your face and you open your mouth and hardly get any, but you get some, and that’s what matters. It should help you last another day.

“Better than getting an eye gouged out?” she questions, and now she’s just being a pure bitch. “You did well.”

Her thumb moves completely. You open your mouth. You don’t care, you just need this so badly, and you gulp it down and it tastes so, so good. The trident pulls away and you let go of it, cupping your hands under your chin so you can funnel more into your mouth and continue to swallow and gulp and heal yourself desperately.

Then you hear a crunch and you gasp and choke on the water. You look down while the rest of the water pours out on your hair and streams down your nose and off your eyelashes.

She pierced you with the trident sideways. One in your collarbone, one in the middle of your sternum, and the last spoke down in your ribs. You’re holding your breath. The crunch was your bones, your tendons, and the ends of the spokes popping out of your back and pinning you to the wall.

You gasp and whimper from how fucking badly it hurts. Your lung is… god, it hurts.

You hold the trident and look up at her. You choke and that hurts too, your breaths so tiny. There’s blood dripping down your chin. She smiles at you and kneels down until her hand reaches out and cups your cheek and you’re shaking, but you can’t feel it. You can’t feel anything but the pain, you’re numb and your vision is blurry.

Her thumb rubs over your lower lip with care, and you almost like it, because you’re in so much pain and you’re scared. Your lungs feel pierced with every little breath you take. You try to expand them, try to breathe properly, but they won’t respond.

“This will be fun,” she says.

Your lungs won’t work anymore. You’re jerking, trying to breathe, but you gurgle and the blood comes out and it’s so, so red. You think of Hal’s text color. You think of your shades where the red TT is broken somewhere. The Condescension turns into every color except red as you stop holding on and die. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my first time writing something like this that's not centered completely around gay love. Hope you enjoy and/or comment~


	2. Chapter 2

You see the sign again. Jamison Avenue. You don’t know how long you’ll be here. Actually… you can’t remember how you got here. You just jog across the empty street so you can see the second green sign that you know you weren’t able to see last time. 

Thirteenth Street. 

It’s not familiar. You have no idea what it means, but here you are, on the corner of Jamison and Thirteenth. You look down the road, but it seems to fade out and disappear into the nothing as if that part of the map isn’t loaded, like the video games you played with Jake.

You feel wind on your hair. You’re not in pain. You don’t remember why you were in pain in the first place, you just know that you feel so healthy and okay. Safe. 

You tilt your head back and look up at the building that sits on this corner. There’s not a car on the street. There’s no birds or other people. You’re alone with this small piece of a town and the wind. Far above you, this building towers tall. You recognize the top, its shape. Is that your home? Is this the unflooded ground you’ve only seen through googles at the surface? There’s no sun but you lift your hand to shade your eyes to gaze at the top. 

A very small figure leans out over the edge of the far away roof and looks down at you. You’re scared because you feel like you’re trespassing on this person’s weird dream land. Or afterlife. You’re not sure. You can’t even stay long. You can feel yourself pulling away. 

 

Your face is freezing and you can’t breathe, your throat is full, your lungs are full. Something yanks hard on your hair while you throw your head around and you’re jerked violently into an upright position. You choke and cough out pockets of water while you blink and get the water out of your eyes so you can see. 

You’re in the same room. The Batterwitch is watching you. One drone and one blue-blooded troll are holding you still and your hands are behind your back in cuffs and there’s a tub of ice water in front of you. You’re panting heavily to catch the breath you had lost as you hold eye contact with that bitch across from you while she just smiles, probably feeling like she’s winning. Maybe she is. Statistically, you haven’t done much good for yourself so far except some witty comebacks. 

“Still thirsty?” she asked. 

“Iced tea sounds a little better,” you let out a bit hoarsely. 

She waves her hand at her little slaves. They think they’re loyal followers, but you know they’re only pawns to her. 

You’re shoved into the water again. You stay calm. You breathe in before you hit the ice and then you relax your muscles. You used to swim all the time back home and had no scuba gear to use, so you became very good at lasting more than a few minutes in the water for fishing and exploring. 

The water is so cold though. You relax the muscles that are tensed up in your face. You’re calm. You think of Roxy. You think of when you and her would video call late at night when you both couldn’t sleep and she would read you fanfiction she wrote while she was drunk and you both laughed until one of you fell asleep. 

You thought about Jake and how he’d message you while adventuring and send you tons and tons of pictures of what he found and you’d research what he found and quickly send the information back so you both could discuss these new discoveries together. 

Your lungs are starting to burn. 

Think of Jane. She taught you everything about what life was like before the flood. School, the movies, malls. The inside jokes, the celebrities. How dinners worked and birthdays. She loved to teach you and you loved to learn. 

You breathe out a few bubbles. You’re so cold, it’s reaching everywhere. Your lungs are begging you to breathe, just _breathe_ dammit.

Think of Hal. He’s probably gone. She probably snapped your shades in half and he’s nonexistent. You think about how curious he was. He asked about what it was like to dream, about what it was like to taste and run. He had no idea what you were making for him.

You gasp. It rushes into you and it stings because it’s so cold. You cough by reflex, but it makes you breathe in more. You thrash your shoulders and fight the troll and drone that hold you, but one has such a tight grip on your hair and its keeping you forced into the water. You tried to kick, but it was hard from your position and the troll stomps on your calf causing you to cry out and fill your lungs even more. You hear the water splashing in a muffled sound from the way you throw your body around in protest. Your chest feels like it’s being torn apart. 

You’re yanked up. A hand slams you in the back and you cough out water again and again. Your entire throat burns and you gag until you vomit the rest of the water. 

Through your gasping you open your eyes. The Condescension is right in front of you, inches away, holding your chin. 

“Stop,” you breathe out. It’s all you can say. 

“You humans are so weak,” she whispers. She leans in and you cringe, but she only kisses your forehead. Then her fingers thread violently into your hair and force you back down. 

You try to stay calm again. Think of Jake. Think of Hal. Think of Bro. Bro, dead and gone, killed by this monster. 

You’re so exhausted from the last round. They pull you up, push you back down. You can’t catch your breath. You decide to let go and breathe it in again, giving up so you can try again after this death. You think of a street sign as your lungs tear apart and burn. 

Then you feel peace. You still hurt, but you’re okay and you don’t think you’re thrashing anymore. You’re dizzy and limp with that sleep you were craving so badly before as you pass over. 

 

That person is gone from the roof. You’re alone on the street again at the corner of Jamison and Thirteenth. You reach out and touch the metal pole of the street sign and try to imagine it flooded over while fish swam around it, attracted to the shine of the metal. 

The more you think about it you start to see it. The water, the ocean. You look down at your feet and see a foot of water, but your feet don’t feel wet or soaked. It’s just there, the same way it looked back at the apartment when you saw nothing but ocean for miles and miles and miles. It was your only horizon until the game. 

“What are you doing?” 

The voice is deeper than your own, but it’s not angry. It’s very to the point. You turn to face the tall building that reminds you of your home, and you’re almost positive it really is your home now. 

There’s a man standing in the open doorway that leads into the building. He’s wearing a black suit that looks perfectly tailor made and he has hair as light as yours. But his shades are round, not pointed. You’re not wearing your shades. 

“Dirk,” he says.

You know who he is. You’d freak out if you could, but this world makes you very calm. Your fingers slip away from the pole as you approach him, and your footsteps seem to echo forever in this empty world, but it doesn’t seem to haunt you. You stop in front of him, hardly a few feet away, and bask in the moment.

“You’re god tier,” he says. He doesn’t ask you, just says it. Then he explains, “I saw you a while ago. Then you came back. You’ve got to be god tier.” 

You nod. Then you say, “You’re Dave. You’re… Bro.” 

“Why are you here again?” he demands. 

“The Condescension,” you say. “She’s killing me. Repeatedly. Is this where you lived?”

“What?” 

You point to the street sign and then look up at the tall building as explanation. “This corner, this apartment building. Is this where you lived? Where I lived after the flood?” 

He hesitates and then nods. “Yeah. Before it turned into the setting of a fish bowl that made this building into that stupid little plastic hula girl that everyone sticks in the tank so the fish can comically swim around it. No, wait, okay, she’s killing you? How many times now?” 

“Three.” 

“Dirk…” 

“I’m fine,” you breathe.

“How bad is it?” 

“No eye gouging,” you reply with a shrug. “Lookin’ on the bright side for now. Just starving and drowning.” 

Dave frowns, but you’re not sad. You’re finding it hard to be sad here right now, but you suppose he’s been dead here for a long time so he knows how to be himself in the afterlife. You’re so glad you’re meeting him, no matter how much the deaths are scarring you, you’re just happy you’re seeing his face and speaking to him and hearing him yourself, not from old interviews. 

“Why are you smiling?” he asks. 

You didn’t realize you were smiling. “It’s you,” you say. 

He sighs out through his nose and takes his shades off, pushing them up on top of his head. He looks like his pictures from the magazines that were left behind in the apartment and his eyes are so brightly red, they remind you of fire. They remind you of Hal’s text. He reaches out and you think he’s going to touch your cheek so you lean in to meet him. But you feel nothing. 

“Dirk,” he says again, but it’s worried this time. 

“I’ll probably be back soon,” you reply right away before you’re pulled away. You can feel yourself disappearing. The faded ends of the street speed up towards you until everything is white and Dave looks nervous before he’s gone. 

 

The afterlife fades like a dream when you wake up. You remember something about a suit and someone was worried. You remember the street signs. You wish you could spend more time recalling everything but your back is freezing and you realize you’re on that steel table that you’ve been dreading. You’re strapped down and you focus on the pulsing of the veins that move through the wall. 

You wonder if the ship is mechanic or powered by some other energy source. You start listing sources of energy that could be used in your head, anything to distract you from the look the Condesce is giving you. 

“Look at me, Dirk,” she says. 

They could use solar, but she’s probably in deep space all the time, and who knows when they’re too far away from a sun to even use its energy? 

“Are you afraid?” 

Some trolls are born with special abilities, uranianUmbra told you that once, so maybe she’s got a mass of troll slaves powering the place with physical labor. 

“Do you want me to set your clothes on fire? Or set it underneath you and watch you melt?” 

Maybe wind powered, but there’s no wind in space so she’d only be able to get that energy while traveling along certain planet atmospheres.

She grabs your jaw and her nails dig into your skin. You know they’ll cut you, but you don’t whimper or beg. You meet her eyes as your heart races. You suddenly feel itchy all over as you think about the pain that’s about to come. You’ve burned yourself while soldering and welding back home but you know this is going to be so different, extremely different, terrifyingly painful, and there’s nothing you can do. 

You try saying, “Don’t.” 

She smiles sweetly and pets your hair that’s still damp from before, her claws actually gentle against your scalp. 

“You’re so pretty,” she whispers. “Smile for the camera.”

She tilts your head, making you look at the camera that sits up in the corner, a dull red light on it that reminds you of your shades when Hal is on. 

“Who’s watching?” you ask, your voice gruff. 

“No one now. I’m recording it all, though. Maybe after this death I’ll send your friends a lil’ movie to watch.”

“Don’t.” 

Her free hand flicks up and you hear a click and then see a lighter with a small glint of a flame at the top. Bro had left you tons of lighters and matches in the apartment in case you ever needed it, and you try to think about when you collected enough burnable items from the clotted water filter and was able to make a campfire on the roof during the night. You would look at millions of stars and Squarewave would lay by you sometimes and then Hal would draw connections between the stars with your shades so he could show you constellations. 

This nice memory doesn’t quell your fear. You yank at straps as her hand lowers, the flame jumping so close to you. 

“Never liked those poofy asshole pants anyway,” you say.

You wish you hadn’t said it. 

The flame touches your clothing and you immediately try to twist your hips to shove the lit pants down against the table top to put it out. You can’t throw yourself around enough. It’s turning the cloth black as it seems to almost disappear to ashes and you think you’re going to scream if you don’t put it out, but you can’t use your hands or feet, you’re just stuck twisting around like a fish out of water. 

You give in. 

“Put it out!” 

You’re glad your poofy pants are poofy for once. It’s taking a while for it to spread. The Condesce smiles and the lighter still has a dancing flame. She keeps flicking her thumb on it over and over and over again. 

The flames grow and spread and it touches your skin and you scream. 

 

“Dirk.”

He holds your shoulders and nudges. Then pushes. Then shakes. 

“Dirk!”

You look up at him, at those familiar red eyes. You’re back at the corner of Jamison and Thirteenth. Dave is grabbing you, then he’s touching your face. 

“Hey. You okay?” 

You squint and then nod. “How did I get here?” you ask. 

He sighs and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Why can’t you remember? You look down at your body, as if it shouldn’t be so healthy like this. Your throat feels okay, as if you had been choking or wheezing not too long ago. You touch your neck and Dave says, “I was there this time.”

“Where?” 

“On the ship with you. You couldn’t see me. Ghost powers and shit.” 

The ship? What’s he talking about? You keep touching your neck as you slowly remember, and your own ghost lungs hitch with a breath.

“I died by suffocation,” you say, stating it to both Dave and yourself. “I’m glad. Everything was burnin’ so badly. The smoke killed me before the fire did and I’m glad. I’d rather starve again. I’d rather drown a hundred times.” 

“I know,” is all he says. 

There’s silence after that. Your body isn’t on fire anymore and you’re at peace here. You’re still terrified, or at least you know you’re supposed to be, but this world of the dead really does make you feel calmer about the extreme torture you’re experiencing. 

“You have a while,” Dave mutters. “The worse the wounds, the longer it takes to heal again. So you won’t leave so quickly again. Do you want to come inside?” 

“Inside your apartment?” 

“It ain’t my real one I guess. It’s my memory of it. You can make this wherever you want it to be. Come on up.” 

You nod and follow him when he turns around and heads into the building. It’s only you and him here. There’s no one in the lobby and no one in the elevator and there’s no awkward elevator music. Just the hum of the box rising the two of you to the top. 

“I can’t believe dead people have to wait for elevators,” you say.

You don’t look at Dave but you hear him make a soft snort. The elevator doors open and instead of opening to a hallway it enters straight into the apartment. It’s different from what you remember. Same shape, a few different things inside. 

“This is how you remember it?” you ask and pick up a notebook that’s lying on the same futon that’s in your apartment. Flipping through the pages you find sketches of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff along with script ideas in the margins. He left these notebooks in boxes in his room, ones you found when you lived in your own apartment. You read them at night when you couldn’t sleep while Hal added his own ideas to make you smile. 

“Yeah,” Dave says, “but I remember yours more.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m in it a lot.” 

“You mean before I lived there.”

“No, I mean I’m there in my ghostly form sometimes. When you fight drones or when you’re chucking a wrench because you’re frustrated with a project—I’m usually there.”

“Really? Does that mean you can take me to my friends? Roxy or Jane? Jake?” 

“That’s not a good idea, Dirk.”

“Why not? Are they okay? Does the Batterwitch have them too?”

“No, no. They’re fine. Looking for you. But they can’t hear you, can’t see you. It’s not like those ghost movies where you can learn to move objects or speak to them in creepy whispers. You’re nothing. And seeing them is going to make you sadder. They’ll come for you, Dirk. Leave it at that. I’m already sick as hell from watching you burn up like a witch at the stake and I don’t want to watch you get sick seeing your friends and knowing you can’t be with them. I never was a good, responsible guardian. Obviously. Most don’t get killed. But please trust me when I say this.” 

You wish you could be angry, but you’re still forced to feel calm in this world. You’re getting used to being here though, so you’re irked, or maybe a bit sad, because your friends are all you’ve been thinking about while in the Condesce’s custody.

You put the notebook away and walk down the hallway towards the spot where your room is supposed to be, hearing Dave quietly follow you. You push the door open and sure enough it looks just like your room. 

“I guess this is your memory,” Dave says. 

You spot your shades on the bed. You walk faster now, lifting them up and putting them on, pressing the arms against the side of your head to make the connection work better, but Hal doesn’t show up on the screen. No red text. No auto-responder. 

“He’s not dead. He can’t be here,” Dave explains. 

“Dead? He’s not really real, though. He’s not a person.” 

“Do you really think that?” 

“No.” Of course you don’t. Jake would say that. Jake would call Hal codes and programs, an unfeeling machine, but you developed Hal to grow based on personal experience so that he would become his own identity. Which he’s done. 

“So she didn’t break my shades,” you say.

“I’m guessing not. Didn’t see what she did with them, though.” 

You take the shades off and set them down on your bed. You’d show Dave around your room and show off what you’ve made and show him your own comics and wait like an excited child for his praise, but apparently he’s been hovering over your shoulder for most of your life. He knows what you’ve made.

“Weird noise, isn’t it?” Dave says. 

You hear it now. The ocean waves outside. You move to the window and peer down and sure enough the ocean is there, rocking and rippling and splashing against the support beams that hold your home up. 

“I guess some people like that kind of noise, though. One time I slept over at Rose’s place—drank a bit too much—and she played this weirdass ‘Ocean Breeze’ CD so it was like I was sleeping on a beach all night, and some people find that relaxing but I kept thinkin’ that crabs and bugs were gonna crawl over me or I was going to drown or something.” He stops and you can feel him staring at you from behind. “Not drown. But, like…”

“It’s fine,” you say to stop him from another rant. “I guess the waves were to me what the sound of traffic was to you.”

“That’s a good way to put it.”

“Where is Rose?”

“Don’t know. I can tell her to come if you’d like, but I haven’t gone to her. Not since you got captured. There’s nothing we can do for you. It’ll make us even sicker.” 

“Who else is here?”

“Some of your clones from different timelines. Ones who were killed by the drones, some who died in the game. I liked to spend time with them and comfort them before their doomed timeline stops existing and they disappear.” 

For the first time in this world, you’re scared. You turn away from the window to look at Dave. The washing waves outside disappear and go completely silent.

“Am I doomed? Is this a doomed timeline?” 

“I don’t know,” he admits quietly. “You could still escape this.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yeah. If you can survive your entire life on your own in a single apartment in a post-apocalyptic world then I think you can survive this. I’m not giving up on your timeline yet and you shouldn’t either. If you do, then it’s definitely doomed.”

“I’ve never felt that much pain before,” you say. You hardly know Dave. You’ve watched tons of interviews online, you’ve watched his movies, read his scripts and his notes. But face to face, you don’t know him, so you don’t know why you’re admitting your fears like this to him, but you have no one else to turn to. You’d tell Hal, because you trust your own creation, and because Hal was originally made from your own brain scan so he can relate to your fears. 

This is different. Nevertheless you continue, “I don’t think there’s a worse pain than that. The burning. I know you were stabbed and all, but still.”

“I don’t disagree. Besides, I died once. You’ve died…” 

“Six times now. Self-decapitation, fiery god-tiering explosion, snapped neck, shish-kabob’d, drowned and burned.”

“Right… I’m sorry, Dirk. Sorry if you didn’t want the life I gave you. You’re a genius though, you’re so smart, I just knew you’d survive. I knew you’d be okay. I didn’t think such a smart kid could be born but here you are, defying all odds and surviving five deaths already. I haven’t seen Einstein or Tesla or Hawking in the afterlife yet but if I do I’m going to pull your baby pictures out of my wallet and shove it in their faces and tell them about my lil’ bro who made a fully functioning artificial intelligence at the age of thirteen. Oh yeah, he also kills giant robots on a monthly basis to keep himself alive, what did you guys do? Build a light bulb? Uh-huh.” 

You end up smirking. You’ve heard Dave’s legendary rants in his interviews but it’s different to see it live in front of you. Except it’s not live. It’s dead. You don’t say that aloud though, no matter how much you think Dave would like the shitty joke.

You haven’t replied yet and after enough silence Dave loses his joking attitude and says miserably, “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You’re not the one torturing me.”

“You shouldn’t be tortured at all. Nothing this bad has ever happened to any of your clones.”

“Which is why I’m doomed.”

“Don’t think like that. You can get out of this, okay?”

You shrug and see Lil Cal sitting on your bed. You reach out and grab his arm, dragging him over to you and lifting him up as if he were alive so you can stare at his puppet face. Dave frowns at it. This was the item that you held at night for so many years when the apartment used to sway and creak during storms. 

When you’re quiet enough and still enough you can always feel the apartment moving. There’s this constant little sway, and when you’re focused you can feel it running through you, swaying you like the ocean waves. 

“You’ll get out of it,” Dave says again. “She’s breaking you. She wants you to give up. I didn’t give up.”

“And you’re dead,” you snap. 

He doesn’t seem offended. He comes to the window with you and the ocean is making noises again, the world not so dead silent. He taps at the window sill and you can see his red eyes behind his shades as he glances sideways at you, but you think he’s mostly looking at Cal. He doesn’t seem to like him. 

“I don’t have any speeches for this,” he says. “I don’t have a long essay written up on how you should fight to survive and I definitely don’t have my resources in MLA format at the end. For once, I can’t put what I’m thinking into words. But are you really going to give up, Dirk? Are you really?” 

You groan at him and let your forehead thunk against the window. The ocean disappears as you fall apart, Dave’s memory taking over and turning the ocean into the Texas street again where you can see other buildings and parked cars and the street sign. 

“No,” you confess. You can feel the pull. Your body is healed. “I don’t want to leave.” 

Dave’s hand rests on your back and runs up your spine before squeezing at your neck. You can see the smile on Dave’s lips. “Don’t come back here.” 

“I’ll try.”


	3. Chapter 3

You wish you could be starving and exhausted again. You wish you could say that everything was a blur, but it’s all vivid. You hoped that after enough of her sick games you’d just zone out and wouldn’t feel the pain anymore. 

Each one is more than the epitome of hell. You don’t know where she’s getting her ideas. They’re mixes of ancient troll torture mixed with the ancient Dark Ages. She doesn’t seem too into gore though and doesn’t gouge your eye out or your intestines or force you to stare at your heart. 

She does watch as a drone smashes your knees to smithereens with nothing but its hand. She doesn’t want the gore, she doesn’t care too much for the techniques, she wants to watch you break apart. She wants you to admit that she owns you, that you’re her pet, that you live to obey and worship her. 

She’ll hold your chin, ask you nicely to say it, to admit you’re broken and that your hers. It’s true, you are broken. You do beg for her to stop because you’re losing your mind and you can’t feel your legs anymore from all the shattered bones and you think the drone is going to aim for your hands and then your elbows until your bones aren’t held together like a tree and rather look like grinding grains of sand. 

You’re broken, but you won’t admit that you’re hers. 

The next time you die it’s because the drone crushes a hand down on your chest. Ribs pierce your lungs and you choke on your own blood. She loves hearing you scream.

 

“I told you not to come back,” Dave says. 

“She just sits there and waits for me to come back. She’s not giving me any time to escape. She just fuckin’ sits there and waits and won’t let me be alone. I wish she’d starve me again.” 

You’re sitting on your bed, but yours and Dave’s memories are mingling together. Some of the things you remember are sitting around the room, but there is also a pile of boxes in the corner that come from Dave’s memory. They’re full of supplies he was going to leave behind for you to survive with. 

“Did you watch again?” you ask, rubbing a hand down your face. 

He’s sitting in your computer chair. He nods. He’s in street clothes this time. A T-shirt and jeans, his shades on the desk. His outfit is relaxed but his face is irritated and worried and even though you’re irritated and worried too it means something to you that he cares, even when he was never around to raise you. You’ve gotten over that. It’s not his fault. He died for you. 

“Don’t come back,” Dave says. 

“Look, I can’t make that fuckin’ choice. You think I like getting tortured? You’re right, I love it. I decided robotics was getting a little dull and I’ve invested everything I have to start experiencing every type of torture that exists. I might start a blog about it. You like blogs, right?” 

You can tell he wants to be angry at you, but as he’s rubbing a hand across his mouth you can see that he’s hiding a smirk. 

“Woulda loved to raise you,” he says next. 

You don’t reply. He knows you would’ve wanted that too. What kind of person would wish to spend their entire life in isolation? 

“What’s your favorite project?” Dave asks. “Saw is pretty cool. Squarewave was always my favorite.” 

“Hal,” you say. “He’s a shit, but I trust him. I actually… I made this thing.” You get off the bed and motion for Dave to follow and he does without complaint. The whole apartment turns into your memory and yours alone as you head into the workroom that used to be Dave’s room that he used for writing and collecting supplies for you. 

You walk over pieces of metal and wires and shove a box of scrap pieces away from one of the storage closets to yank the door open. You step back to show Dave what’s sitting inside, held up by wires connected to the ceiling. 

“He doesn’t know I made it,” you say. 

A year ago you got sick of Hal whining about having a body. He still whines, only because he doesn’t know you’ve made it. You spent months and months lying that you were taking long showers, or that Saw needed updates, but really you were completing this beauty that was sitting here in the closet. It was all finished, but the game started before you could reveal it to Hal. 

“I used cameras from your old room to make the lenses for the eyes,” you say. “Every time I took down one of the Condesce’s drones I would collect all the good shit inside them and use them to make his body all the better.” 

Dave starts to smile more easily as you show off all the work you’ve done. You open up the body’s chest to show him the water tank inside that would be used for self-cleaning and also a coolant. You show him the weapons you’ve put in his forearms and Dave mumbles something about “Assassin’s Creed style, fuck yeah” and then you show him how the red circuits on the black skin worked like veins, connected sensory wires to the artificial nerves you’ve created so that Hal would be able to feel like a human. 

Dave’s expressions and comments on his pride and astonishment are something you didn’t know you’d love so much. This is what it felt like to have a parent be proud. You start smiling as you stand next to your creation. You remember what he said the other time you were here with him, that he spends a lot of time watching you and you realize that he knows you made the body. He probably watched you make it. He’s saying this nice stuff for you and he means it. 

“I had a fight with Hal a while ago,” you say. “I didn’t want to prototype him. I think I almost killed him. I mean, I was never going to, really, but I think I scared the shit out of him. I had this body ready and it never went to use.” 

Your hand is rested against the chest of the body. When you tested the body a few times you could feel the light vibrations and whirring underneath and you wish so badly you would have transferred Hal into the body before the game. Maybe you wouldn’t be so screwed like this then. 

“Put it to use,” Dave says. 

“What?” 

“Put the body to use.” 

“I can’t. I’m captured, remember?”

“Find your shades. She didn’t break them.” 

“It’s not that easy. The ship is huge. I’m doomed.” 

“Are you?”

You look over at him. He just stares back. He doesn’t touch your cheek or hug you or give you any powerful parting words. He knows you’re being pulled away and he knows your body is healed again and you can feel yourself getting pulled away too and you have no clue what to say. What if you don’t come back? 

He manages a very soft smile and then you’re gone.


	4. Chapter 4

You’re alone. By alone you mean no Condescension. There’s a drone standing watch right next to the table that you’re still strapped on. There’s a set of knives hanging on the wall that weren’t there before and it gives you a scary idea of what kind of death is next. 

For a long, long time, you stare at the drone. You look at the light in its eyes and the joints in its neck and the connections between its elbows and shoulders and hips. You study it until you believe you’ve mapped out everything that holds it together and makes it whole, until you’ve mentally thought out every code that makes it act. 

It’s been about twenty minutes (at least you think so, not knowing the time still pisses you off).

You move very quickly and very suddenly. Your legs aren’t strapped down and you throw your legs up, one hooking around the drone’s shoulders to tug him in, your other foot pressing to the drone’s face and shoving as hard as you can with a grunt to twist his head until wires snap and joints pop and sparks fly. 

The drone shakes and jolts, its arms flailing uselessly. It can’t see you, but it hits your chest and your legs and you know they’re bruising. It keeps hitting you and it reaches your face and you’re groaning in effort to keep it from ripping you apart as you adjust your legs to try and continue twisting its head. It’s done a 180 so far and you need just a little more. 

It hits your face again hard enough that you feel your lip split open and there’s blood streaming out of your nose. 

You risk losing a grip on it, but you put both feet on the sides of its head and twist as hard as you possibly can and practically scream in effort until the entire head twists off. It’s only hanging on by a few wires, but the body is broken and falling apart and falling to the floor in a twitching pile, but the things death grip on you stays and yanks back on you until the entire steel table tips and falls with it. 

The table hits the floor with a loud bang and your body jerks down by gravity, pulling on your arms that are still strapped down. Your left shoulder pops and you can’t help but scream from the pain, even when you’ve felt so much worse during your time here and you continue to hang painfully from that dislocated shoulder until you find support on your knees. 

You can’t reach the tight leather straps with your teeth but your right hand next to the floor can reach the severed neck of the broken drone. You reach your fingers in just enough to grab a ripped piece of metal and it cuts your palm, but you pull anyway until it snaps free. It hurts your wrist to bend it down and slip it under the strap and it only cuts your wrist as you grind the shredded metal back and forth, slowly making your way through the strap. There’s blood running down your wrist and you’re whimpering, but you don’t stop until the leather parts and snaps open, letting you free. 

Gasping in relief, you turn to easily get your other wrist free that you’re having a hard time moving. Your entire body is shaking. You can’t wait. You have to go. 

This is not doomed. You can do this. 

You head for the door and shove it open with your working arm and are astonished to see the hallway is empty, the only sound being loud engines somewhere, a constant whirring, and the pulses in the wall. There’s another room a ways down and you walk slowly, your hand and wrist leaking blood, so you wrap it up in your shirt so that you don’t leave a trail. 

The door is locked so you don’t waste your time. You head down to the next room and that’s locked too. Then you hear the footsteps and you know they belong to a drones so you start to run and each breath absolutely hurts from your bruised and battered chest, causing you to add some prayers to your thoughts that you didn’t break any ribs. You can’t deal with that right now. 

Right when the drone comes around the corner of the hallway you slip into the next room you find that isn’t locked and pull the huge door closed with the quietest click. 

The room is pitch black. You stop breathing. You listen to the drone walk by. His leg whirs and then thumps. Whirs and then thumps. 

You don’t make any noise, but you can hear your blood roaring through your head and every fingertip. Your back is touching some type of shelf, the metal freezing under your sweaty hands. The whirs stop, the thump is a single thump, another step not taken. You haven’t breathed in a long time. 

Everything but the drone seems to be screaming. 

A drop of blood from your wrist makes a single roaring splash on the floor. 

The drone’s leg whirs and thumps again. It leaves. It disappears down the hall and you make a hallow gasp as you begin breathing again and collapse to the floor in the dark. Your arm is in pain, but somehow it feels numb at the same time and you know you have to fix it now or you’ll lose function in it and you really don’t feel like killing yourself again just to heal these wounds. For once, you want to do it naturally. 

Your movements are shaky as you press your chest to your knees and then lace your fingers tightly together over your shins. You’ve never had to do this before, but after a fight with drones back at the apartment you thought you dislocated your shoulder and you looked up how to fix it, but it turns out you only pulled a muscle pretty badly. This time you’re positive it’s dislocated and you really hope this works. 

With your fingers laced tight as leverage you start to lean your body back and pull your arms out straight and stretch them until you feel everything pop back to where it belongs. 

You’re biting on your lip and holding in a pained yell. Everything is aching and throbbing. Your breathing is shaky as you try to ignore the pain and focus on what to do next. You drop your arm down and just take these moments to contain yourself and collapse back against the shelf behind you in a moment of composure. 

The shelf rocks a bit and something stabs you against the head and you wince, reaching up to rub the sore spot and check your lap for whatever just fell and smacked you. 

Your eyes widen in the dark when you feel the shape. They’re your shades. You put them on immediately and all the pain in your body seems to be on pause while you focus on this new find, your finger finding a small button on the edge of the shades to turn them on. You’re almost panting, waiting in suspense. Then:

 

TT: What the fuck is your problem? It has been two weeks. I saw that bitch break your neck and the next thing I know I’m being flicked off like a light switch and you didn’t turn the light switch back on for two fucking weeks so I’ve been sitting here idle like a fucking fake intelligence does when it’s off, so again, I ask, what the fuck is your problem?

 

You just smile. You’ve been here two weeks, Christ. You’ve been utterly alone for two weeks in pure pain and now you’re seeing the text of the person you trust the most. 

 

TT: It’s a really long story.

TT: God, I’m so happy to hear from you.

TT: What happened? I need details. Where are we? My camera is only picking up darkness. I’m turning on the night vision. Dirk, what happened?

TT: Can you access camera footage?

TT: No, I can’t access anything wirelessly right now, you’ll have to find a computer. Please update me already.

TT: The Condesce captured me, she’s been holding me for torture for the last two weeks, she put you in this storage room apparently and I’ve recently escaped and hid in here when a drone on patrol was passing and I hit the shelf when I was trying to fix my dislocated shoulder, which happened to drop you off the shelf and right into my lap.

 

Nothing comes up on the screen for a bit. You wait, looking at your orange text, and then a background fills up your vision since Hal has turned on the night vision program. You turn your gaze, seeing the walls full of shelves and extra ones set up in aisles in the middle of the room. You can see the door four feet away, a tiny bit of light reaching underneath. 

 

TT: That was extremely vague but slightly helpful. Where are we?

TT: Her ship.

TT: I can not access any network but I can sense a connection nearby. Perhaps two or three rooms over. I can’t help with seeing guards in the hallway so I’m trusting you to get there and not destroy either of us.

TT: What the hell is wrong with your hand?

TT: Had to cut the leather on my wrist with one hand. Necessary damage to get free.

TT: Your breathing is off.

TT: One: I’m pretty scared about being caught right now.

TT: Two: May have hurt a few ribs when I was killing that drone.

TT: Again, I don’t understand and you are being vague.

TT: Just-

TT: Wait, okay? I’ll get to the computer and you can access all the camera footage and everything will make sense very quickly.

TT: Fine. I’ll wait.

TT: Be safe.

 

You move for the door then, one quiet step at a time. You press your ear to the cold metal and it feels good on your face that’s going to swell up and bruise eventually from that drone’s last attempts to hurt you. But you’re listening, and the hallways seems quiet. The pulsing of the ship feels so real under your touch. 

Ever so gently you nudge the door. You can peek a single eye out. There’s nothing out there so you open the door only enough to slip your body out and then you’re moving very quickly without making a noise with each step, trying to imagine yourself as only a soft tissue falling to the floor with your movements down the hall. 

You count two doors down and Hal sends a message saying that the connection feels strongest here, but you have no idea if someone is in the room in the first place. You open the door as slowly as you did with the last one, not making a noise. 

There’s a large set up of computers. You think about the tiny computer set up back in your holding room, but you were almost positive that thing was broken. This set up has to hold the entire network. 

There’s a single troll sitting in front of the screens. You see camera views on each of the six different screens, all of different hallways. They flash periodically to show a different camera view and you don’t see a view of the room you’ve destroyed not too long ago, which is probably why no alarms have gone off yet. The troll seems distracted enough and you make a decision to kill him very quietly and try not to question your morality so that you don’t chicken out when it’s too late and you get recaptured. 

You do to him what the Condesce did to you the first time. You grab his jaw in one hand, your other palm pressed over his opposite ear, and then you wretch it all sideways. His neck crunches and you gag and almost vomit. You’ve killed his kind before. You have to escape. You’re not seeing your Bro again until you’re old and gray and ready to go. 

 

TT: Are you alright?

TT: What?

 

He doesn’t reply. You shove the body out of the chair and ignore the thud as it hits the floor and look up towards the screen to see one of the feeds switch to your old room where the drone and the knocked over table still lay, but you force yourself to ignore that and start searching the drawers around the computers for wires and extra pieces you can use to help hook up Hal to the network. After finding the right cord you use your teeth to rip one end off that wouldn’t fit into your glasses and fidget carefully with ends of the wires until you gently slide them into the opening on the side of your shades and stay very still so that you don’t jostle it. 

 

TT: Did it work?

TT: Connecting. One moment.

TT: I don’t have one moment.

TT: What would you like me to do now that I’m connected?

TT: You should probably fill in the blank spots. Access recorded video footage from her security cameras.

TT: One moment.

TT: There is one recording of security camera footage and it’s still running. I’m accessing it now. I’ll do a fast download.

 

You don’t move. You wait. You can’t break the connection with the wire even though you want to shake and bite down on your lip because you know Hal is about to see everything. He’s going to witness and hear everything that went down in that room these last two weeks within a single minute after the download is complete. 

When that minute is over he only says one thing. 

 

TT: Dirk.

TT: I know.

TT: I don’t know what to say.

TT: I’m sorry.

TT: Hal, I need you to pull up a map of the ship. Download that onto the shades. And then I need you to transfer your entire file to Roxy.

TT: Your messaging system doesn’t seem to be working. I’m only working because I come with the shades.

TT: You’ll have to bear with me and let me repair the connection of your messenger to this ship’s network rather than your independent wireless one.

TT: While I try and do that will you explain to me why I must transfer myself to Roxy’s communication device?

TT: Hal, I built you a body. It’s fully equipped with weapons and it has every program you need to know how to control it without any practice or adjusting. It’s in my apartment back on my own planet and I need you to transfer to Roxy’s device so that she can manually hook you up to the body for another full transfer.

TT: And then come get me.

 

He doesn’t reply. You keep staying still, keeping the connection to the computer strong and you hope he’s just working on the map request and not ignoring you after all this news. 

 

TT: I will not leave you here alone.

TT: Not after what she did.

TT: Body or not, your mental health will decline considerably once I transfer over and leave you alone. How will I help you when I am with Roxy? What if you are caught?

TT: Did you hear me correctly? A body. Your own body, you can be more real, you can physically save me. Isn’t that better than fucking with the ship’s cameras and pulling up maps for me? You can blow down the door and save me.

TT: Please.

TT: Everything fucking hurts and I want my friends and I want you.

 

This time, when he doesn’t reply, a file pops up on your shades and you open it to find a map of the ship. The ship is ginormous and it overwhelms you until you see Hal drawing over the image in red, circling a spot. 

 

TT: This is where you are.

 

Another map overlaps the one you’re looking at and you assume that it’s a new floor, probably underneath you. Another circle appears, opposite of where you are. 

 

TT: This is an exit. One of a few.

TT: This one is highly unguarded, but it is slightly flooded, most likely for HIC’s tastes. Coordinates show that we’re not too far away from yours and every else’s planets. You can get there and fly back.

TT: I can’t fly. I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to do it. What if I jump out and just hurtle through space forever? I don’t belong in the everlasting interstellar medium, I can not be packed into a distant planet, I need your help.

TT: I know. This exit is passcode locked. I will access it from outside. Meet me there.

TT: I’ll try.

TT: Someone is coming.

TT: Dirk.

TT: I will come.

 

Before you can reply, the door behind you flies open. You spin around and the shades fall off of your face and you’re looking at a drone. The drone looks at you and then at the dead troll on the floor, but you react before the drone does. 

You jump straight onto the drone, no matter how much pain you’re in, and wrap your legs around the robot’s head so you can grab it with your bare hands and start twisting it like you did with the last drone you destroyed. The drone throws its body forward and your back slams with the ground, forcing all the air from your lungs. You’re choking to try and breathe, but you throw your thighs to the side and force the drone’s head to the side with you, impaling it on the horn of the dead troll. 

With some sparks, the drone goes limp and it’s dead. You drag yourself out from under it and look at your shades, your heart seizing up when you see that they’ve been cracked in half. You landed on them when you hit the ground. 

You put them on and desperately and try to make contact, but the words you’re thinking aren’t showing up and everything is glitched and broken and dead. You can’t even access the maps that Hal left for you. Hal is gone. What if he didn’t transfer? 

“Fuck.” 

You whisper it because you’re scared you’ll be found. You pick up the shattered shades and bring them with you and try to remember what the map looked like, because it’s all you have right now. You can’t give up. Dave wouldn’t want that and neither would Hal. 

You leave the room and do the same quiet walk you did before, moving fluidly but in complete silence. You pass door after door, having no idea which hallways are safe, but knowing the general idea of where you should be headed. You were sure that there was a staircase in one of the corners of the ship and there isn’t any helpful signs on the wall, so you’re doing your best here. 

 

The ship is huge. You stop at the end of each hallway and peek around the corner. If there’s a troll or drone you count and wait quietly until their backs are turned and you can walk past. 

You thought this would be a quick travel, but this ship is honestly bigger than big. You feel like you’ve been traveling forever. It’s had to have been ten minutes now, which, when you think about it, is a really, really long time when counted out second by second. You think the ship is pulsing faster. You don’t think about the broken shades. You tell yourself everything is okay.

When it really, really isn’t. 

 

You find the staircase. It clanks no matter how quietly you try to walk down it, but the more you spiral down the more the sounds become dull and distant. 

You’re faced with water, at least a foot high. You have no choice but to start walking through it, and it seems clean so you lean down and wash away all the blood that had been irritating you as it dried all over your hand. Your legs drag against the weight of the water, and it’s freezing against your uncovered toes, but you continue to trudge down the hallway towards the area where you at least think the exit is. 

You almost yell when an alarm goes off. 

Your back hits the wall as red lights blink on the ceiling and some part of you prays it’s a stupid fire drill. Jane used to complain about those because it was always really cold out when the alarms started going off. Something tells you this isn’t for the drill though. 

A floor above you, there’s a large crash, big enough that that you feel the shudder against your own body. You start running. You don’t know where the exit is, and you don’t know if Hal is even alive anymore, but you’re running. 

You are not doomed. You aren’t, you’re making this work. 

The ceiling above you explodes downwards and you’re thrown back in the cold water. The chill is the last thing you think about though as you struggle to get to your feet. There’s dust and a busted pipe is squealing and someone upstairs is yelling. You’re on your feet and you’re running, each step lifting up over the surface of the water so that you aren’t trudging and being slowed down, just trying to get around a corner. You should have picked up a weapon. 

Something besides your own feet are making splashing noises. And then something grabs your shirt and a hand grabs your arm. 

You yell and throw your elbow back in a blind fury. The hand on your arm moves lightning fast and catches your elbow in a tight grip. 

“Dirk.” 

It’s the body. The white face with red eyes, the white fibered hair, the black, sleek body. It’s moving and working. One of the knives you put in his forearm is out and there’s blue blood on it. With a quick snap of the arm the knife disappears back into his arm. 

“Come with me. The others are waiting outside,” Hal says. 

“What?” 

“Jake, Roxy, Jane. I told them not to come in. I would get you alone. Come, I can take you to the exit. We have to move fast. They’re coming for us.” 

Hal doesn’t let go of your arm as he starts running, and honestly the yank on your arm helps you keep up, not allowing you to trip, because when you do, his unbelievable strength drags you right back up without having lost any ground. The veins in the wall are pulsing quickly and they remind you of the red lines in Hal’s skin.

You stare at him in awe while you run. He’s alive. He’s alive and he’s in the body, and the body is working perfectly. He’s here, after everything. Real. 

“What happened?” you ask over the blaring alarm and your splashing feet. 

“I transferred to Roxy the second I saw that drone coming. It was before you destroyed the shades. Roxy took me instantly to your apartment and transferred me into the body after I told her everything that had happened. She explained everything to Jane and Jake while I was transferring. I tracked your shades since they were still on, even if they were broken, and lead them here—love the boosters in the feet by the way, great touch—and they promised to wait while I came in to grab you.”

You look away from his body, wishing you had all the time in the world to see your creation move around. Hal yanks you quickly down another hallway where you think you see the exit, a large and circular door on the wall. 

But she’s waiting there. She’s leaning against the exit, her trident in hand. Hal slows down until neither of you are running anymore, but he puts his hand out and blocks you from her. You still admire his body and you press a hand against his back and it’s warm there because that’s where his core is, and the blackness is so sleek. And you’re afraid. 

“Ya really thought this was gonna work?” the Condescension asks. 

“I am choosing not to destroy you,” Hal says. You used your own voice to create his voice, but you tinkered with the tone and pitch a bit so that it was just a bit higher than yours to at least create some difference. But right now his voice sounds dark, something you never would have thought Hal to sound like when you were creating the programs for his speech feature. Your fingers curl in against his back and you’re pretty sure he’s pressing into you. 

“He’s mine. I’m real close to breakin’ him. He’s gonna be my pet,” the Batterwitch says. She grins, her shark mouth flashing. “I’m sure you saw it all, robo-baby.” 

“Step away from the exit before I change my mind,” Hal threatens, voice all the scarier. 

“Nah.” She lifts her trident, and in that same moment, Hal flicks his arm and the long knife pops out. She smiles, obviously amused, and concludes, “I’m choosing to destroy you.”

Her arm moves back, aiming the trident, and she throws it within that same very short moment. 

Hal isn’t god tier. He belongs in that body. He doesn’t have back up files on your destroyed shades. 

You know what saving him means, too. 

It doesn’t matter because you’ve already done it. You’re in front of Hal now, and your back collides with his chest when the trident strikes you in the middle. One spoke is piercing your lung because you know what that feels like now. Hal’s scary voice turns into something frantic as he holds you up under your arms and holds the trident, yanking it out of you. You whimper and his hands press down over your gushing wounds. 

“You know what this means,” he growls in your ear. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

The Condesce is approaching. She’ll kill him and keep you again. 

And then you can feel her. Really feel her. You’re going numb and your legs give out, but Hal holds you up. You lift your hands and hold them out towards her and suddenly she freezes in her tracks and frowns at you. Her image turns blurry and you can feel every horrible thing she’s ever done. 

You can sense every death she caused. You can feel what she felt when she killed your brother. You can feel every ingredient that makes her soul, and you can feel your own soul aching in effort as you tear hers away. She’s shaking and you can hear her shrieking physically and within the soul. Hal is holding you so, so tightly. The blood rushing out of you burns. 

Her body stays where it is but her soul is coming close to you and you think you’re screaming now. Absolutely everything hurts. There’s whisks of violent colors rushing through the air and the water seems to boil and the troll who tortured you these past two weeks is being ripped apart and it’s so difficult to do, but it feels so right. 

And then everything is very quiet. You’re holding her soul in your palms. You can feel her heart beating through you, as if your own blood were a bright fuchsia, and for a few moments you and this troll become one. 

Her body a few feet away thumps lifelessly to the floor, an empty vessel. There’s a pool of red spreading out in the water. You’re so cold. It’s hard to breathe. Hal whispers something in your ear, and even though you don’t know what he says it just feels so good, even when you can’t feel the air touching your ear. It feels good to be held. 

You crush your palms together and listen to the distant shriek as you destroy her soul. Then she’s truly gone. 

Your hands fall limp and your eyes roll back, head hitting Hal’s shoulder so you can look up at him dimly. 

“Hold on,” he mutters. “You can’t die. It’ll be heroic. Don’t die. You’re my creator. I need you.” 

You reach up slowly and touch Hal’s face. You spread blood on the white skin you used to make his head, and Hal’s hand is incredibly hot as it clutches at your shivering fingers. His other hand is still clutching around your middle, trying to stop the bleeding, but you can feel it streaming past his fingers no matter how hard he tries. 

“Kill me,” you breathe out. You’re trying not to breathe so fast. It hurts so much. 

“No, Dirk—”

“Kill me. If I die like this it’s because I saved you. Kill me yourself. Kill me yourself… and I’ll come back.” 

Slowly, Hal sinks to his knees in the water. You’re still lying back against his chest. His bloody hand runs back through your hair and he’s so gentle compared to his angry and protective attitude earlier. 

“I love my body,” he says. 

“It was a surprise,” you whisper. 

His hand runs down to your shoulders. The water is cold, cupping around your waist and turning more red. You’re freezing. You think you can see the street sign. 

“Thank you for creating me. I’ve always wanted to touch you.” 

You smile and he touches your lips. His warm hands brush along your chin and jaw, holding so gently, so tenderly. His lips touch your temple and you think you let out the quietest whine, because after two weeks of pure hell, you’ve never felt so happy and loved, even while dying. 

You try to whisper and tell him this, but your lips won’t obey. You think of his warm touch when he breaks your neck.


	5. Chapter 5

The shower’s spray is incredibly hot on your back. You’re sitting on the floor of the tub and you think you’ve been doing nothing but that for the last half an hour. At least. You’re thinking about a lot of random things to pass the time. You think about codes and you think about sewing a new outfit for Cal and you think about your friends. 

Jake came to see you yesterday. It’s been a month since the game and the two of you only worked together to win but hadn’t really spoken much as friends should after a break up. But he came over and he held you forever. He clutched you and swayed and rubbed your back and told you he missed you so much and he told you he was sorry about what happened, sorry about what happened between you two and also what happened to you on the ship. You think he was crying. He told you he loved you still and that he always would.

You couldn’t kiss his lips. You kissed his temple and went back to hugging and promised that you loved him too. You both wanted your old friendship back. And it was back. He messaged you this morning and invited you out for some hiking and you agreed. 

Roxy comes over a lot. She cuddles you on the couch and you watch videos together. Sometimes she brings Rose. The first few times Rose came over she tried to get you to talk, and you know she meant well, but you refused and you still do, although you did mention that you have someone to take care of you. 

Jane comes alone or with Roxy sometimes. She brings sweets and makes sure she watches you eat it, saying you’re too skinny but that she’s saying it because she loves you and she’s worried. She gossips and you join in while lying across her lap and she pats your tummy and you manage to smile for a while.

A week ago, Dave came over. Not your older brother, but his clone. Hal had been trying to distract your constantly frantic mind with some video games when the knock at the door came and Hal told you to stay where you were because you trusted him to turn away the people you were too down to see. Jade tried to visit once, but you had been getting over a flashback and Hal had politely told her to come back another time and then quickly returned to holding you. You owed everything to him, even if he says you never have and never will. 

When Hal told you Dave was at the door you said nothing. He asked if you wanted him to turn Dave away. You shook your head and pulled up one of you knees to your chest, sitting on the futon and waiting. 

When Dave came in he looked at Hal for a while, studying the body and then meeting his eyes. Hal was at least four inches taller than the two of you (you needed more room for all the mechanics) and his sleek humanoid form was a little intimidating to those who weren’t familiar with your robotics. Jade had a field day over him. You’re positive Hal loved all the attention. 

When Dave’s attention came off the android he looked at you on the futon. His shades were on and so were yours, but you knew the color that laid under his because of those times you spent in the afterlife staring at your older brother. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hey,” was all you replied. 

You both had talked during the game, but times were hectic and crazy and bloody and your conversations were mostly about strategies and plans to win the game. 

You used your head to gesture to the open spot next to you. Dave nodded and put his hands in his pockets as he approached you and sat down beside you, relaxing back into the futon that he had in his own copy of your apartment. Hal closed the door, filling up some of the silence. Your video game was still on the paused screen, the background music still going. 

“I really like Roxy,” Dave said. 

“She’s the best,” you agree. 

Then he went for it: 

“She told me about what happened to you. With the Batterbitch.”

“Batterwitch.”

“I know what I said.” 

You sighed and scratched the back of your head. Hal was staring near the door, hovering and constantly questioning if he should step in and protect you. You ended up shrugging as a reply until you could find actual words and tell him, “It fucking sucked. I don’t know what to tell you. It was terrible.” 

“No, yeah. I assumed that.”

“And I don’t want to talk about it either.”

“Assumed that too. I just have a question.” 

“Shoot.” 

“Did she burn you alive?” 

You looked away from him and stared at Hal instead. He shifted and stared back at you, his own red eyes dimmed, asking a silent question. Should he interfere? You gave him a small shake of the head and he seemed to relax as you looked back towards Dave, only briefly, able to catch a glint of red from the side of his face, and you gave him an affirmative nod, which caused him to nod back. You wanted to ask him how he knew that, but you assumed that Roxy told him. He’s died before too. You all have died before. You should be more open. 

“I died a while ago,” Dave said. “Stabbed by two flying dogs. And before John fixed shit, I was in the afterlife for a while. When I stopped freaking out I tried to find my older brother, so I focused real hard on him. Instead, I was taken to you. Man, you were strapped down like some sick horror movie and she lit you up like a morbid cult version of the Fourth of July. You were screamin’. I got scared and then I left.” 

You took your knee away from your chest and instead crossed your legs, trying to make yourself look more open rather than closed off and small. Dave meant no harm here. You wondered if your own brother was nearby and watching. If he was, you knew he wouldn’t want you hiding away and avoiding this other clone of him, and you knew that the Dave sitting next to you wouldn’t want that either. So you nodded and eventually replied, “Yeah. Yeah, that was me. I didn’t see you. But when I died I saw the alpha version of you, every single time. Ghosts can go see whoever they want. But we can’t see them.” 

“I never found my own brother,” Dave said. He was trying to avoid frowning or drawing his brows together, but you saw it. “Do you think he’s here?” 

“Could be. What was he like?” 

“We strifed. A lot. He was cool. He really kicked my ass at strifing though, I was never good enough to beat him. Man, he split a meteor in half to save me, I shit you not, it was fuckin’ action movie stuff man, like he could star in some really bad white-washed Kung Fu movie, ya know?” You caught him smirking and that almost made you smile as he continued with more of a sigh, “He was tough. He was cool, but he was really tough on me. He’d leave me on the roof after a strife. He made me do it when I didn’t want to. All that porn shit lying around the apartment. Man, it was lying around since the day he took me in. I know he loved me and all that shit, otherwise he never would’ve picked me up out of that hole, I mean, hell, I destroyed his favorite store on that meteor and he picked me up and was like ‘shit I’m gonna feed it,’ so, ya know…” 

He shrugged and you realized you pushed your shades up on top of your head. Dave glanced over at you and then he took his own shades off as if it was a requirement for sharing deep, dark feelings like this. You could feel Hal’s presence behind you and you were scared to say what you wanted to say next. 

You whispered it. “Kind of abusive.” 

He made yet another shrugged, his elbow hitting the armrest as his temple laid in his palm. His voice was miserable when he replied, “I know.” 

“Tell anyone else this?” 

“No.” 

“Why me?”

“’Cause you’re kind of him. But you’re not. I thought you’d be his perfect twin, but you’re not. I thought it would be like telling Bro what an asshole he is, but it’s not, I’m telling Dirk what an asshole Bro was, but it’s not like that at all, but I still love the guy, ya know? Like, he hurt me to prepare me for the game, he knew, all the guardians knew, so I get that he did it, but I wish I would’ve known, ‘cause I groveled for that dick’s attention constantly, I just wish I had known before he got himself killed. God, you never even knew your bro, I must sound like such a whiner right now, Strider Whine Time, huh?” 

You actually smirked then. You shook your head and even chuckled. “God, you talk too much.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I ain’t criticizing you. I get it. You were his kid, you wanted his love regardless of the confusing shit he did to you. I get it. It’s cool. And… I’m sorry you saw what happened to me there.” 

“I’m sorry it happened.” He looked incredibly relaxed. He wasn’t so tense as he lifted his head from his palm and looked at you without being terrified of holding eye contact. “Nightmares?” he asked. 

“You know it.”

“Same. You said you saw your bro?”

“Few times. He’s cool. He’s kind of like you, but different too. Seeing him helped me make it through all that shit. Kinda hoping he’s around right now to hear me say thanks and shit.” 

“I’m sure he is. Ya know, they’re probably hanging out. Our bros. Talkin’ shit about us.”

You both smiled and you nodded in agreement. 

He ended up staying all afternoon. You showed off Hal’s body to him and when Dave wasn’t so intimidated by him they seemed to get along and you watched as they played Mario Kart together, but Hal big time kicked his ass nine times out of ten. You think he let Dave win the last time. 

You clasped hands with Dave when he left, pulling him in for a short hug and patting his back. You don’t see him as your older brother’s clone anymore. They’re separate identities. But this Dave is still your brother.

 

 

You’re still in the shower. It’s a little odd to breathe now, the steam is so thick in the air, and you’re not thinking about your brother anymore, you’re thinking about suffocating on the flames that are coming off of your own body. You’re shaking. You throw open the curtain, but everything is still on fire. 

Hal is standing there in the bathroom, towering over your form sitting on the floor of the tub. He sees you gasping for air and he approaches and crouches near you, the warm metal of his hands cupping your cheeks and forcing you to meet the red glow of his eyes. 

“Look at me,” he orders. 

You nod as much as you can while being in his grip. 

“Tell me what’s wrong.” 

“I can’t breathe,” you wheeze out. “The fire.” 

He stands and throws open the bathroom door and then flips the switch that turns on the fan. Cool air starts to fill the room as Hal grabs a towel and wraps it around your shoulders before he helps with dragging you out of the tub and sitting you in the doorway where he sits with you, wraps you up a little tighter, and then holds you to his chest. 

The air here is cold now. It’s so clear though. It’s not smoky and full of flames. You breathe in and out, just like Hal has told you to do before, and he presses a hand to your chest, his fingers spread out gently as a reminder. 

“What were you doing?” you choke out.

“You had been in there for two hours. I was growing concerned. I was only standing there for the last fifteen minutes before I heard your gasping.” 

You nod, your breath shuddering, and Hal’s voice dips down lowly in your ear as he reminds you to breathe slowly and you nod to show him you remember and then obey. You breathe in and out. You focus on his hand pressed to your chest, watching it rise and fall with your ribs. He tells you you’re doing well and you just nod again, resting your head on his shoulder. 

This isn’t the first time you’ve had to do this with Hal. He watches over you while you sleep because of your nightmares, and he monitors your blood pressure and heartrate while you sleep so that the second things become irregular he wakes you up before the nightmare gets too severe and he lets you clutch to him. 

When things are too much he strifes with you. When you’re sore from a good strife then you can’t focus on everything that happened in the past, but Hal always stops before things go too far and you really get yourself hurt. 

He’s an AI, but you absolutely love him. Some of it might be your pride in what you’ve created, but Hal was programed to develop based on his own experiences and now he’s Hal. Not you. You’re different people and his person is absolutely protective and caring of you and you absolutely love the way he takes care of you and you’re positive you love him. 

The first time you tell him it’s a chilly day out and you’re having one of those depressed days. Sometimes you feel good and you go out to visit your friends, but that day you feel like shit and you lay in bed all morning until Hal begs you to get out and he makes you breakfast to coax you, even though it’s after noon, and he serves you eggs and toast and orange juice and then he stands behind you and plays with your hair slowly while you eat, one hand traveling down to caress your neck and then squeeze your shoulders that were tense until he had his touch on you. 

You tell him you love him and bite your toast. After you swallow it, he grabs your jaw from behind you. It’s not hard, though, and you’re not scared. He tilts your head back and he meets your eyes upside down, and then he’s leaning down towards you and you close your eyes halfway as you wait in anticipation until his lips touch yours. Your breath shakes just once, steam holding onto his lips, but he can’t breathe back against you due to his lack of lungs. You press up and kiss him and he doesn’t pull away. You love the hold he has on your jaw, you love when he holds you and protects you. 

He knows where to draw the line. It’s not like he keeps you cooped up inside and treats you like a child. He knows when to be your friend and let you out and live as you get better, but he also knows when you’re in the mood to be ordered and controlled, and you love that he’s both. 

You begin going out more. You hang out with Dave a lot, usually alone. You both talk about the game easily together. You visit Jake a lot, too. You visit with the trolls and you get to know John better, the one who fixed your session in the first place. Sometimes you all get together as one big group and play nerdy card games and chat all night and eat through five bags of chips. Hal comes with on those nights and you see him smile when he’s treated like a real person rather than a scary android. 

 

 

When another month passes, you feel okay. But the memories grab you whenever they feel like it, and you know they will ten years in the future too. You didn’t have a nightmare, but you’re lying awake in bed thinking about it. Thinking about everything she did. 

You can hear the crunching of when she broke your neck. Of when you broke that troll’s neck. 

When Hal broke your neck. 

You think about when you woke up in his arms after your revival. You hadn’t seen your older brother during that time in the afterlife. You had been alone in the whiteness, but you think you saw your alternate self. He had Cal wrapped around his shoulders, a sword in his hand, and he stared at you and waved at you and you waved back until you were pulled back into the land of the living. 

Hal had touched the land of the nearest planet. You were coming to and you saw all your friends around you. Jake looked like he was hyperventilating and Jane had been crying and Roxy was the one to pull you into her arms, practically pushing Hal away. They all held you, they were all frantically talking, and you kept trying to say you were okay, over and over again. You felt so constricted and were finding it hard to breathe until Hal ordered them to give you some room. 

You start thinking about the pulsing in the walls. You roll on your side and stare at your own wall. The last time you glanced at the clock it had been two in the morning. You can’t sleep. Your eyes watch and you hold your stomach, thinking about the trident that had been stuck in you and you think about how much it ached and fell apart when you were starving and exhausted. 

“Hal,” you call out, but you don’t need to yell it. You just say it and you can already hear his footsteps down the hallway, probably having been watching TV or reading in his head. He still has internal access to everything electronic. 

His footsteps are in the same room as you now. You sniffle and wipe your eyes against the blanket and Hal says nothing. You feel the bed dip from his knees and the blanket tugs as he crawls in and lays down behind you. His warm hand touches your hip and then slowly wraps around your stomach where you’re clutching, pulling away your clawing hand and replacing it with his own that’s much gentler, caressing the sore area. 

“She is gone and I love you also,” he says. “I think I understand what love is and what it means now and I’m confident in my statement of it.” 

You clutch his arm that’s around you and he presses himself into your back. His chest is so warm, his core radiating in heat, the mechanics whirring. You don’t think you could lie with a living human like this. 

“Thanks,” you whisper. 

His hand on your stomach moves up when you’ve relaxed. He caresses your neck, his fingertips brushing along it and then along your jaw. He doesn’t say it, but you know he’s guilty. He killed you to save you, but breaking your neck makes you sick. He tells you that your neck is his favorite part of your body.

You watch the light in his circuits dim until you’re both in the dark again. Your eyes close and you don’t think about how you could have been doomed. You wonder how many other timelines succeeded. You wonder if the doomed were ever really doomed or if they still flourish somewhere, because you’re all them and they’re all you, and each one deserves to exist just as much as the next. You just know all of your splinters that you used to despise are probably, finally, okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you could bear with me through this, so thanks much. c: I'd love to hear comments and ideas. And also I appreciate you all in general. <3


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